Web Caching

Abstract

The popularity of the World Wide Web has led to an exponential increase of the traffic generated by its users for over a decade. Such a growth, over such a long period of time, would have saturated both the content providers and the network links had Web caching not been efficiently deployed. Web caching can improve the overall performance of the World Wide Web in several ways, depending on the decisions made regarding the deployment of the corresponding caches. By placing caches in strategic positions, the core network traffic can be reduced, the load of a content provider can be scaled down, and the quality of service, as the users perceive it, can be improved. In this article we present an overview of the major design and implementation challenges in Web caching, as well as their solutions.